RomeRoma

Rome's own story begins with a date and a legend: 21 April 753 BC, when Romulus is said to have founded the city on the Palatine Hill. Archaeology tells a slower story of villages on the hills above the Tiber, on a ford where the river could be crossed and a salt route ran to the coast. By the sixth century BC the villages had merged into a city under Etruscan kings, and in 509 BC the Romans expelled the last king and founded a republic. The republic lasted almost five centuries and gave the city its habits of law, roads, and government by elected magistrates and a senate.

The republic gave way to empire in a century of civil war. Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 BC, and his heir Octavian, taking the name Augustus in 27 BC, became the first emperor and boasted that he found a city of brick and left it of marble. At its height under Trajan and Hadrian in the second century AD the city held about a million people, fed by grain from Egypt and supplied by eleven aqueducts. The Colosseum was finished in AD 80, the Pantheon was rebuilt by Hadrian in about AD 126, and the Forum filled with arches and basilicas. Then the empire's centre of gravity moved east; Constantine founded Constantinople in 330, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, and the last western emperor was deposed in 476.

The Middle Ages shrank the city to a small town among ruins, kept alive by the popes. Cows grazed in the Forum, which was known as the Campo Vaccino, or cow field, and marble was burned for lime. The Renaissance and Baroque popes rebuilt the city as a stage for the Church: the new St Peter's was begun in 1506 and consecrated in 1626, Bernini and Borromini filled the squares with fountains and domes, and the Trevi Fountain was finished in 1762. In 1527 imperial troops sacked the city, a shock that ended the confident Renaissance.

Rome became the capital of a united Italy in 1871, after the papal state lost the city, and Mussolini's regime in the 1920s and 1930s cleared streets around the Forum to build a wide processional road, now Via dei Fori Imperiali. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 created Vatican City, the smallest state in the world, inside Rome. After the Second World War the city grew fast into a modern capital of about 2.7 million people. Today the ancient monuments, the papal city and a working capital live on top of each other, which is why a single afternoon can take you from a Roman temple to a ministry and a queue for gelato.

Rome sits on the Tiber about 25 kilometres from the sea, on seven hills whose names every guidebook repeats: the Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal. In practice you meet them as slopes rather than summits, and the hills explain why the ancient centre climbs and dips while the medieval city spreads across the flat bend of the river to the west. The Tiber is the spine: on its east bank lie the Forum, the historic centre and Termini station; on the west bank Trastevere, the Janiculum hill, and beyond it the Vatican.

For a visitor the city is easiest to read as five zones. The ancient core around the Colosseum and Forum sits at the south-east. The historic centre, with the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori, is the middle, and a short walk north-east brings you to the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the luxury shops of Via dei Condotti. The Vatican and Prati lie across the river to the west, about five kilometres from the Colosseum. Termini, the main railway station and metro crossing, is the transport hub on the east side. Trastevere, the old working quarter across the Tiber, is the lively part of the south-west with restaurants and evening crowds.

The metro is small because the ground is a layer of archaeology: every new line stumbles on ruins, and line C has crept forward for years. The practical result is that most sights sit between the two main lines, A and B, and that you walk more than you expect. A single ticket costs about €1.50 and covers 100 minutes on metro, bus and tram, and buses fill the gaps the metro leaves, at the cost of time. Taxis are useful for the Vatican and for luggage, and they have a fixed fare from the airports.

A useful rule is to plan by zone and by hour. Do the ancient core in the cool early morning, the Vatican on a timed slot, and the piazzas after 18:00, when the heat drops and the light warms the stone. Walk between clusters only in mild weather; in summer take the metro or a taxi between zones and keep your walking inside the zone. The clusters on Voykit follow that logic, and the three-day plan chains them in an order that keeps the walking to a sensible length.

The Forum was the centre of Roman public life: a valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills where citizens met, voted, did business and heard speeches from the Rostra. What you walk through now is the ruins of several centuries at once. The Via Sacra, the processional road, is paved with volcanic basalt slabs; the Arch of Titus at its eastern end records the sack of Jerusalem in AD 70; the Curia was the Senate house; the columns of the Temple of Saturn held the state treasury. Almost everything you see stands above ground level of the republic, because centuries of silt and rubble covered the older floors.

The Colosseum, at the Forum's eastern end, was built by the Flavian emperors and opened in AD 80. Its official name was the Flavian Amphitheatre; the name Colosseum probably came from a giant statue of Nero that once stood nearby. Eighty entrances let about 50,000 spectators in and out in minutes, a piece of crowd engineering that stadiums still copy. Below the wooden arena floor ran a maze of tunnels and lifts for animals and stage sets; the floor is partly rebuilt and the underground is visited on a separate ticket. The structure lost stone through earthquakes and centuries of reuse, and its missing outer wall shows the concrete and brick beneath the travertine.

The Pantheon may be the most remarkable single roof in the city. Hadrian's version, built around AD 126, has an unreinforced concrete dome 43 metres across, the largest of its kind until modern times. The dome gets lighter as it rises, because the builders used lighter volcanic stone at the top, and the oculus at its centre is open to the sky. It survived because it became a church in 609. Inside, you can see the tombs of the painter Raphael and two kings of Italy. Rain falls through the oculus and drains away through holes in the floor.

Rome's engineering is easy to overlook because it is everywhere: roads that still carry cars, the Appian Way built from 312 BC, the aqueducts that fed the fountains, and the concrete that made domes possible. Public baths such as the Baths of Caracalla were social clubs for thousands. To keep the ruins legible, try to see them in order of use: the Forum as a place of law, the Colosseum as a place of spectacle, the Pantheon as a place of ritual and the baths as a place of leisure. That order also matches a sensible sightseeing route, with the Forum and Colosseum in the cool morning and the shade of a bath complex later.

Rome is the seat of the Catholic Church, and the Church shaped the city almost as much as the emperors did. St Peter is traditionally said to have been martyred in Nero's circus on the Vatican hill in the 60s AD, and a shrine over his burial site grew into a basilica under Constantine. The present St Peter's was begun in 1506, with Bramante, Michelangelo and later Bernini and Maderno among its architects, and consecrated in 1626. It is about 190 metres long inside and one of the largest churches in the world; Michelangelo's dome rises to about 136 metres, and his Pietà sits behind glass in the first chapel on the right.

The Vatican Museums grew from the popes' collections of ancient sculpture, gathered from the sixteenth century onward. The route runs through the Gallery of Maps, the Raphael Rooms and finally the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512 and the Last Judgment on the altar wall between 1536 and 1541. The chapel is also the room where cardinals elect a new pope. The rule of silence and no photographs there is real, and the guards enforce it. Plan three hours for the whole route, book a timed ticket, and go in the first slot.

Beyond the Vatican, Christian Rome is in every neighbourhood. The four papal basilicas, including San Giovanni in Laterano, the pope's own cathedral, are free to enter and hold much less crowd than St Peter's. Santa Maria in Trastevere has gold mosaics from the twelfth century, and Santa Maria Maggiore has fifth-century mosaics above its nave. Beneath the streets run catacombs, underground burial galleries along the Appian Way where early Christians buried their dead; some can be visited on a guided tour.

Visiting churches in Rome comes with rules that are easy to follow. Cover shoulders and knees, carry a light scarf, and keep your voice down. Many churches close at midday for a long lunch break, often 12:00 to 15:30, so plan them for the morning or late afternoon. Some charge a small fee for chapels or a coin for the light on a painting. The reward is that many contain paintings and sculptures worth a museum, including Caravaggio canvases in San Luigi dei Francesi near Piazza Navona, and are open for free.

Roman cooking is short on ingredients and long on technique. Four pastas define it: cacio e pepe, made with pecorino cheese and black pepper; gricia, with cured pork cheek and cheese; carbonara, with egg, guanciale and cheese and no cream; and amatriciana, gricia with tomato. Alongside them come supplì, the fried rice croquette with a soft mozzarella centre, carciofi alla giudia from the Jewish quarter, and offal dishes from the Testaccio slaughterhouse district. Pizza in Rome is either thin and crisp, served round in the evening, or al taglio, baked in large trays and sold by weight at lunchtime.

The coffee culture has its own rules. Order an espresso, called a caffè, and drink it standing at the bar, where it costs about €1.20 to €2; a table costs more, often double. Milk in coffee is a morning habit: cappuccino and cornetto before about 11:00, then espresso after. Many bars use a pay-first system: you pay at the till, take the receipt to the barista, and place it on the counter with a coin on top so the barista sees it. At Sant'Eustachio the house coffee comes pre-sweetened, and you say amaro for no sugar.

Dining follows a schedule. Lunch runs from about 12:30 to 14:30 and dinner from 19:30, with many kitchens closing between. Restaurants add a cover charge, the coperto, of about €1.50 to €3 per person, and some add a service charge; it is normal, not a scam. Tipping is small: round up or leave a few euros for good service. The best short menus are on a chalkboard, and the worst have laminated photos and a tout at the door. Book a table for dinner at well-known places a few days or weeks ahead, and do not rely on late walk-ins.

Gelato is the afternoon reward. The best gelaterie keep their pistachio pale green rather than bright, serve it from covered metal tubs rather than from mounds, and have a short seasonal list. Most operate a pay-first system, and side-street shops charge about half the price of those on the squares. Wine comes as house wine in a quarter- or half-litre carafe, cheap and usually fine. For an evening drink, aperitivo from about 18:30 brings a spritz or a glass of wine with snacks. Water is free at the nasoni, the public drinking fountains, and tap water is safe to drink.

Rome has four clear seasons and a very strong sense of rhythm. Spring, from March to May, brings mild days, wisteria and Easter crowds. Summer, from June to August, can pass 35 °C in the afternoon, and Romans leave town in the second half of August around Ferragosto on 15 August, when many family restaurants close for a week or two. Autumn, from September to November, is often the best season, with warm days and fewer people. Winter, from December to February, is cool and damp and the cheapest time to visit, with Christmas lights and empty museums.

The city keeps a calendar of holidays. Rome's own birthday, the Natale di Roma, falls on 21 April; Liberation Day is on 25 April; the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June is a local holiday; Ferragosto is on 15 August; and on 8 December the Spanish Steps host a flower tribute for the Immaculate Conception. Sundays are quiet: shops close, families eat a long lunch, and some museums keep shorter hours, while the Appian Way opens to walkers and cyclists without cars. Mondays close many state museums.

Daily life for Romans is compact and sociable. People live in apartments above the streets you walk, take the coffee break at the bar and expect to greet a shopkeeper when they enter. Traffic is loud, scooters are everywhere, and crossing the road takes a firm and steady pace: walk out at a steady speed rather than dashing, and drivers will steer around you. Business is done in the morning and again in the late afternoon, with a long midday pause in smaller shops.

A visitor who wants to blend in follows a few habits. Greet with buongiorno on entering a shop and buonasera after about 17:00. Keep your bag zipped and in front on buses and at the metro stations near Termini and the Spanish Steps. Book the timed tickets first and fit the rest around them. Take a rest at midday, when the light is harsh and the crowds are thickest, and come back out in the evening when Rome does its best work. That rhythm, with the ancient sites in the cool morning, a long rest and the piazzas at dusk, is the one the city has kept for two thousand years.